Farmers from Mindanao will soon export mangoes and other agricultural produce to Malaysia and Indonesia as senior officials and ministers among these countries recently agreed to intensify trade beginning early next year.
MinDA executive director Janet M. Lopoz has stated that Malaysia and Indonesia, in a gathering in Kuching, Sarawak in Malaysia last week, agreed to import agricultural produce from Mindanao, opening another opportunity for local mango growers.
She said they encourage the fragmented mango organizations here to strengthen their ranks so they can easily gain a firm footing once they enter these new international markets in the Brunei Darussalam Indonesia Malaysia and Philippines East Asian Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA), a 25-year-old sub-regional economic cooperation initiative in Southeast Asia designed to spur economic development in the lagging sub-economies.
She added that one of the issues that the government is fixing with its Malaysian and Indonesian counterparts include the phytosanitary standards, which bar the mango exporters to enter new international markets for failing to meet the required minimum residual level.
Mindanews.com reported that according to the Philippine Statistics Authority, mango production in the country from April to June 2019 stood at 556,000 tons, higher by 5.4 percent compared to 528,000 tons recorded in the same period of 2017.
